“Homer
with his honeyed lips
sang
of the bright sun's clear light;
yet
the sun cannot burst with his feeble rays
the
bowels of the earth or the depths of the sea.
Not so
with the Creator of this great sphere.
No
masses of earth can block His vision as He looks over all.
Night's
cloudy darkness cannot resist Him.
With
one glance of His intelligence
He
sees all that has been,
that
is,
and that is to come.
He
alone can see all things,
so
truly He may be called the Sun.”
—from
Book 5, Poem 2
All
analogies are implicitly incomplete, and those concerning the Divine will be
especially so, given that we try to describe an infinite and perfect Creator by
means of finite and imperfect creatures. To say, for example, that God is like
a mighty fortress is quite helpful in one sense, but can also be misleading in
another.
Nevertheless,
certain images are especially powerful when it comes to describing what is
absolute and transcendent, and so mythology and philosophy from many different traditions
will often speak of light as a symbol for wisdom and truth, and the Sun as a
symbol for the very source of all wisdom and truth.
Light
makes things clear and visible, provides warmth and comfort, and is one of the
necessary conditions for us to live. I would be a fool to try to stare straight
into the Sun, and yet I see everything by means of the Sun. Where there is light
we think of a fulfilling presence, and where there is darkness we think of a
disturbing absence.
Yet even
the light of the Sun cannot reach all places or penetrate within all things. If
I consider that all beings are only possible through the unity of Being, that every
particular is but a ray of emanation for the Universal, then I will also
understand that nothing is beyond the reach of that which is everything.
Wherever
there is existence, there it is present, not coming from the outside in, but
proceeding from the inside out. Wherever there is action, there is the Mind
that guides all action. Past, present, and future, and every little aspect, are
completely known to it.
I feel
relieved to be aware that nothing is in vain, that nothing is beyond the
totality and design of what is, but I may now be troubled by something
else: how do I, as only a part, fit into the totality of the whole? What will
become of me when God not only knows where I came from, and who I am now, but
also exactly where I will be going?
Boethius
will now struggle mightily with this problem, and he will challenge Lady
Philosophy about how much he can possibly matter in the face of what is omnipotent
and omniscient.
Written in 1/2016
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